An alumna of Clarion West Writer’s Workshop for science fiction and fantasy, I’ve written for markets like The New York Times and Time Out New York. Currently, I write about sci-fi for Blastr. I also edit the humor competition for The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction. You can follow me on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and here at Forbes.

Sexual Harassment in Videogame Culture

There’s so much to learn about harassment in video game culture–not only in-game but also AFK–that it’s been very difficult to encapsulate in one article. So I’m breaking it into two parts. Part one, below, describes the problem of sexism in this not-so-niche geek culture and includes interviews from both female and male gamers. Part two discusses potential solutions.

WARNING: FOUL LANGUAGE

Shavaun Scott was stalked not once but twice by fellow gamers during her time in Lineage II. As an elf healer named Evanor, she offered her services to a knight and an orc at different times. She said, “They believed we were actually having a relationship. In both cases they’d get really angry if I played with other people instead of them. One called me a whore, or called Evanor a whore.”

Scott isn’t just a gamer. She’s also a psychologist and the co-author of Game Addiction: The Experience and the Effects. So she is able to describe her experience as both a gamer and a professional psychotherapist: “It was interesting how I actually felt frightened, even though I knew the guy lived a couple of hundred miles away…it was the dynamic of the relationship he was trying to create.”

According to vs247, there are 39 million active MMO gamers in the United States. Although many gamers play to immerse themselves in a different world, the most cited reason people play MMOs is to socialize with friends and potential friends. An estimated 40% of MMO videogamers are female (that number increases to 47% when you account for all videogames), and as some of them can tell you, these social interactions occasionally have negative consequences.

Online games have introduced single people to their future spouses and future careers, as well as have literally and figuratively saved people’s lives. Best of all, MMO games, and online gaming in general, are a terrific way to meet fabulous people and kill them.

But a small percentage of players–I have no statistics, but most of the people I interviewed believe that sexual harassment comes from a vocal few–have made online gaming a difficult and unpleasant experience for female gamers.

Let’s backtrack. Once upon a time, the world of videogames was clearly a male-dominated one. That overly hormonal male college student or the teenage boy in his mother’s basement? Those were in fact the majority of gamers…over twenty years ago. To cater to this audience, videogame companies added sexualizedfemale characters. Scantily clad female characters were the norm–both in game and in real life, as seen by the “booth babes” hired for conventions to entice male gamers to their gaming booths.

Now that MMOs are peopled by women and men in relationships, the single male gamer is still the majority, but less than you might think, and Valve has proven that non-sexual female action heroes can star in award-winning and lucrative games. (Thanks, Portal!)

Still, many games companies have lagged behind the times (see Lollipop Chainsaw as an example of a sexualized female character). So have gamers, who believe that saying “Get out of the game and make me a sandwich” is an appropriate response to encountering a female player. In 2012.

Sadly, some female gamers have come to grudgingly accept this as par for the digital course.

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This might be nit-picking, but wasn’t the character in Lollipop Chainsaw meant to be a parody poking fun at similar characters in other games? I admit I haven’t played it, but everything I read about it gave me that impression.

Is there any particular reason seemingly all of your articles don’t WANT to be neutral and you only quote “feminist” sources or people with ties to feminist organizations to make/prove your points? What about other schools of thoughts, they couldn’t possibly have said nothing at all regarding the issues you are talking about, this YouTube channel for instance is rather refreshing and enlightening in issues related to “modern feminism” and some of the things you speak about in your article: http://www.youtube.com/user/girlwriteswhat/videos

And you believe that whenever someone says something mean or demeaning you wouldn’t like to hear on the internet, which might make you feel uncomfortable, this constitutes “sexual harassment” and should be reported? (I’m not talking about obvious, real threats of violence or similar here, but from the way you write it, you seem to consider someone something like “im gon make you drop them panties” as you quote it worthy of reporting to the authorities.)

I remember a recent article about the Tasmanian police actually issuing a public statement for people to STOP DOING THAT: http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20120716/03420319708/police-tasmania-explain-to-public-that-someone-saying-something-mean-online-is-not-illegal.shtml“If the conduct complained of would not amount to an offence if it occurred off-line, then it is not an offence simply because in a particular instance it was undertaken with the aid of digital technology,” the department noted.

“For example, complaints have been received about comments posted on Facebook which are abusive or harassing. If this behavior occurred in a public place it would not be a reportable offence.

“It is not the role of Tasmania Police to censor internet content.”

The belief that everyone has to “abide” by feministic social norms/ideals and you get to dictate how people have to behave by trying to change them, especially in an environment you are entering (which you seem to imply: “the world of videogames was clearly a male-dominated one”), instead of doing some adjusting yourself is beyond ridiculous. Most of these things could be solved by not taking everything so seriously, if there is an actual problem confronting it directly and if there is no reason to be had simply ignoring/muting said person or choosing another server like most other people do.

In that vein, “Lollipop Chainsaw – bad!”, maybe you could instead just accept that, like every book, movie or music piece out there, not every game is geared towards the same target demographic and a lot of people enjoy and want a game like that, but that couldn’t possibly be a consideration (regardless of it being a parody or not)…

Do me a favor, please. Walk up to a random woman in your local mall and say “I’m gonna make you drop them panties.” Or just straight-up call her a c*nt. Then please come back and tell us that, in the “real world,” those things aren’t considered “harassment.”

Sorry I don’t really roll that way, but I’m pretty sure no one would be convicted for any of that in the largest part of Western Europe, and I’ve heard considerably worse in clubs, bars or even on the train platform. But then the US is also a country where a 7 year old can be convicted for “sexual harassment” because he touched a girl while playing or kicking a bully in the groin, so I wouldn’t be surprised: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/12/05/mark-curran-7-year-old-un_n_1130001.html I remember the South Park episode “Sexual Harassment Panda”.

Also regarding the word “rape” that is mentioned in the article, there are different meanings for the word, including say in the Oxford English Dictionary: http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/rape”the wanton destruction or spoiling of a place: the rape of the countryside

Language changes and meanings of words change, the same way “gay” for instance meant happy, but now mostly has a different connotation, people will have to get over it…

I find it a lot more telling that the author apparently finds a “rape joke” in an online comic a lot more threatening and deplorable than an apparent actual death threat (or that it would lead to such), after which an apology is apparently still expected.

You don’t visit 4Chan (knowing what kind of place it is) and try to teach them “to behave” and embrace your glorious teachings of feminism, the same way you don’t play League of Legends/Heroes of Newerth/Defense of the Ancients and expect not to be called bad words if you play badly (seriously, try it, there is a pretty high success rate of it happening) because the game is highly team based and a single “bad player” can ruin a game of up to 30+ minutes for others and some get agitated rather quickly and you will need a thick hide, someone is most always considered “the weakest link” and then it happens.

Same with going on Xbox Live and playing a game like Call of Duty, what kind of audience do you expect to find?

While I do see your point on the use of words, ‘gay’ being a perfect example. I once had a friend tell me how shocked and appalled she was that when the Disney version of Pinocchio came out on DVD they kept ‘gay’ and ‘ass’ in there when contextually the words were not used in a disrespectful way at all. The point is the context though. It is not just what a person says, but how it is said and its context. Somebody saying, ‘so gay!!!!’ in the heat of battle doesn’t usually mean that what has happened is a happy thing and the word ‘rape’ along with a beast made up of multiple phallus doesn’t seem to mean ‘wanton destruction’. The use of the word coupled with the imagery makes the mind think of sexual rape in that instance, so I can see how some people would be offended and say something (though death threats are taking it too far). PA’s humour has always been off-the-cuff so to speak and (to me) it’s usually pretty funny, but again, I can still see how some people can be offended. If somebody has been the victim of sexual rape they won’t take kindly to those kinds of jokes.

Also, I don’t know about where you live, but where I live anything that makes a person uncomfortable is constituted as harassment and if it has anything to do with sex then it’s sexual harassment. It doesn’t mean that you’ll go to jail because of one count, but if it’s in the workplace and somebody complains then you can be suspended without pay and other such things or depending on the severity or number of complaints you can be fired. If you know the person it’s different as well. If it’s your best friend making the comment you know if they’re kidding around or not. A complete stranger online could potentially really mean it and depending on their computer know-how they could find you and make it a real-world threat instead of just an online threat. True, this doesn’t happen every second or anything like that, but it is a possibility which can make people uneasy, especially considering that there are a lot of psychos out there and you never know who you’ve pissed off.

There are varying degrees of harassment and each person deals with them differently. If somebody calls out to me on the street in that way (or online) I personally just ignore them because (in my experiences) those people are idiots who can’t keep a meaningful relationship and aren’t worth the time or effort it would take to give them a pithy retort, but if it escalates to another level then I do something about it. Everybody is different and I’m not saying that people need to walk on eggshells, but at the same time people shouldn’t be jerks. If all you can say is, ‘u r gay bitch/f**ker i will punch you in the c*nt/dick’ and other asinine comments like that you are really taking the fun out of it for the people that are playing for the fun of playing. Nobody (and I’m not restricting this to females) should be made uncomfortable while trying to have fun playing a game.

And nobody should be talked down to when trying to play a game. You really should probably only raid a dungeon and other quests with people about the same amount of experience as you and if they’re not then people should remember that they were at one time less experienced and had to learn what to do through trial-and-error or the (rare) kindness of others that help you and give you tips to help you on your way to higher levels. A person shouldn’t be treated like an idiot because they haven’t spent the last five years of their life playing whatever form of game it is. Everybody (whatever gender) starts at the beginning and has to work their way up and just because somebody has more experience it doesn’t mean that they have the right to insult or harass somebody because they didn’t know the finer points of the game.

“If all you can say is, ‘u r gay bitch/f**ker i will punch you in the c*nt/dick’ and other asinine comments like that you are really taking the fun out of it for the people that are playing for the fun of playing. Nobody (and I’m not restricting this to females) should be made uncomfortable while trying to have fun playing a game.”

Todd, that is NOT what the point of gaming should be. If you want to create a server where you can harrass and say anything you want to anyone, that’s you’re right, but I feel like the game developers would rather have a space where everyone can be welcome to play and enjoy their creation instead of being called a faggotnigger every 30 seconds. And some of us actually like to socialize instead of just muting it.